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TheKidWho writes "According to Thinksecret: 'Reliable sources inside and outside of Apple have confirmed Apple will announce the new pocket-size iPods in a number of capacities and in various colors, including stripes. Capacities will be 2 and 4GB -- meaning users could store some 400 and 800 songs, respectively. Prices will start at around $100US, Think Secret has learned. It is not known if the new product line will be available immediately after introduction. It is also expected that current iPod models will be revamped to add body colors as well.' With the $99 price tag, it seems these rumored iPods could make big headway in the low end mp3 player market."

This is certainly the crux of the matter. IMO the solution is to make it run off 2-3V external power, and then sell a battery pack that will snap on, plugs into the AC adapter hole (though it probably won't have one, instead running off USB) and you can slap alkalines, nicds, or nimhs in it. Sony has made a number of small portable devices powered on just this plan, and it worked really well. Then they can sell it with a removable battery pack with whatever battery technology they want in it, and you can replace it with an apple-sold or aftermarket (but unsupported) battery pack as well.

sacrificing design to make a (tops) 1 hour chore that you have to do once ever 18-30 months slightly easier is not in my opinion a worthwhile choice. so what if you have to buy the battery for $50 or pay apple $99 to replace it. do you see the other mp3 players offering replacable batteries or battery replacement programs?

The NiMH batteries in the Neuros and the Lithium Ion battery in the Neuros HD are expected to last at least 1 1/2 - 2 years (depending on usage). Only our Neuros technical team can replace the battery for you and, as a result, it is not consumer-serviceable. Our battery replacement policy is as follows.

Within Warranty (90 days parts, 1 year labor)-If within first 90 days of purchase - NO CHARGE-Past 90 days, but within 1 year- $7

what are the dimensions of a Nomad Zen NX? would you care to give a comparison to iPod's dimensions? i haven't found on their site any documentation about which battery it uses, how much it costs, and what it takes to replace it. It does say it's a replaceable battery, but technically, iPod *also* has a replaceable battery.

hint: if the iPod is a smaller, more portable form-factor while touting similar capacity, while being less confusing, with less holes to plug shit in, less buttons to fuck with, your average consumer ain't guna give a shit about a device that's a geek's dream. detachable this or that, believe it or not, is confusing to the average user. It's a matter of which audience you cater to. More on this later.

There are reasons why there are tradeoffs. the iPod is extremely small for the capacity it offers, it is extremely portable and unintrusive. i have fit mine (2G) in just about any pocket i've had. Furthermore, many of my co-workers had bought competing players, absolutely every single one of them complained about either its form-factor or lack of capacity. Nomad Jukebox3 is a big square-ish size, much like today's CD players that are basically the size of a CD, which is NOT a form factor that is nearly as appealing as one of an iPod's. Don't get me wrong the features and interoperability capabilities of the Nomad jukebox3 are simply impressive but when a device's form-factor is not really a constraint, you can go to town with features. That doesn't mean this is necessarily what the average user Apple targets will be drawn to. The Jukebox3's affluence of buttons and holes to plug things in also make it, to your average non-computer geek, a "complicated", "confusing" device, while geeks see those features as a God-Sent. it's all relative. Sure the lack of replaceable battery is frustrating. But it ain't the first time, nor is it ever guna be the last time this sort of issue will plague consumer electronics.

Replacing an iPod battery is NOT that hard, you just gotta be careful and requires a bit of skills. If that doesn't do it, then pay the $100 for the cost of the battery and to have someone else install it and be done with it. Or buy extended warranty such as AppleCare or one from Fry's, Best Buy, CompUSA, FNAC, or whoever sells you the iPod. It ain't that bad. People always pit the price of a battery against the price of the device it goes into and get infuriated to "pay $100 for a battery for a device that's only $400". No no no and no. Most resilient, quality batteries are expensive and that's the fucking way it is. Especially the type of flat one required for the iPod, it is quite a nice piece of engineering. When it dies, you gotta pay. period. Take a deep fucking breath and accept this fact.

It always works like this: you shop for some device, it tells you it's rechargeable, but no one ever cares to ask "yes but for how long, what do i do when it can no-longer hold a charge" to make an informed purchasing decision based on those questions. They don't think, then get pissed when the inevitable happens, then go whine at their lawyers, who in the end will be the only winners in the upcoming class-action lawsuit. Once people also get the device they rarely ever look at best practices included in their manual to enhance battery life. There you have it.

this isn't about zealotry. some people happened to have understood why Apple has made the compromises it did at the time it did and accept 'em without whining all fucking day, and will eventually vote with their feet and potentially wait for improvements, others choose to bitch around, karma-whoring on slashdot, thinking they're smart and have a fucking clue about industrial design and stating the obvious ad nauseum, bragging about how device X or Y has a detachable this or that while never addres

I wrote up the following screed, and then realized I should start right off the bat with the most pertinent point:

The iPod battery is user-replaceable for $49. See below for a link to one vendor.

The iPod was obviously designed for optimal simplicity, elegance, and small-size. Apple crammed a flat battery into the thing that is about the size of the entire back of the device, and thus managed to make the highest capacity/size ratio portable mp3 player available.

Adding an easily user-accessible battery door would (to my mind) break the seamlessness of the iPod's design and possibly require that it be larger as well (consider a door that's the size of practically the entire back of the device -- or whether the dimensions would change if some sort of snap-release tab-in-slot mechanism was added to the entire length and breadth of the current iPod back).

Given that the battery lasts at least 18-months, I'd prefer to have a seamless design, and then have a little fun with a screwdriver when the time comes (rarely) to change the battery. In addition, I wonder how long the tiny hard drive will last given the conditions in which it's used and the forces to which it's subjected -- it wouldn't surprise me if (had I an iPod) I'd only need to replace the battery once.

What's that, you didn't know the battery IS user-replaceable? See IpodBattery.com [ipodbattery.com] for details on the $49 ipod batteries they sell and to read the installation instructions. It doesn't look all that difficult for anyone who knows how to use a screwdriver.

People seem to like to pile on criticism of the fact that the iPod battery is not easily replaceable. But I haven't heard the same sort of griping about the non-easily-user-replaceable lithium-ion batteries built into most PDAs (Palm Tungstens, Sony Clies, RIM Blackberrys, Compaq Ipaq, etc). I doubt all these companies forgo providing easy access to the batteries as some conspiracy to force consumers to replace the devices or pay to have a new battery installed, but rather the devices are designed to be as small and tightly packed as possible, and given this concern less regard is rightly given to putting the battery in an easily accessible spot and adding a door.

It is worth griping a bit about Apple's previous battery replacement policy (they wanted $255 to replace the battery), but they've since changed their tune quite a bit and it'll now cost $99 to have them replace the battery for you. In addition, when buying an iPod, an additional $59 gets the warranty extended to two years.

'Course, the iPod is out of my price range. I spent less than the cost of a $49 iPod battery on my teensy 128Mb USB-memory-stick-mp3-player-voice-recorder toy (Andus resound, flashed with some similar player's firmware to allow it to be mounted on Macs, Windows, and whatever-else as a real generic USB storage device), and find that this is a more than adequate amount of memory for a few hours of jogging. But if I were to buy an iPod, it would be because I appreciate things that are well designed and a joy to use, and the battery issue wouldn't even be on my radar.

Oh, okay, we get understand now. You don't want to use the iPod to store and/or transfer data files, which it already does. You want to use it to steal music. Yea, it's not very good for that. You need to use some other software written by hackers.

Why didn't you just say that you want to steal music right away, and save the confusion?

Exactly. This behaviour is far better, I mean the 'newbies' won't ever use the iPod as a hard drive, and if they stumbled across the music on a folder on their desktop (the iPod mounted) then they might be tempted to start uploading through there, instead of keeping a proper libary of music sync'd up through iTunes...

not bad imho, though as always it remains to be seen. apple hw is funny in the sense that the RUMOURS are told in the fashion that normal announcements would be otherwise(and likewise, rumours used as facts when comparing to other upcoming hw with shipping dates, specs and reviews).

Well, the iPod shows up as removable storage. It is either a mac FS or FAT32. And you can dump files into it using third party programs, such as EphPod and PodWerks.

What you're asking for is already done.

What ISN'T done, is the ability to manage files by directory: to drag and drop them using your os and "just have it work." This isn't done for several reasons, not the least of which is indexing. Maintaining an index of the ID3 data inside an MP3 file is as important as its name...because it is this metadata that allows you to search by genre, artist, 'star' rating, etc. If you just dragged and dropped the files, you'd either have to a) build this index on disconnect, which could lead to LOTS of trouble, not to mention a lengthy startup time or b) build this index when the files are copied, which means having to attach data to the driver, and gets you no closed to cross platform compatibility than having a uniform application.

Another reason is to assuade fears that Apple was making a file swapping tool. Apple's software is one way only...copy to the ipod or delete it. You can't copy from it. Therefore, Apple can't be sued for abetting piracy...since all the pirates have to use third party tools, of which there are several good ones for Windows, Linux and OSX.

All told, the iPod is the best cross platform solution around. Apple just doesn't make a Linux version of its software...and there are TONS of compatible options for Linux users. They've already made your dream come true. And they've just answered essential questions you didn't even think to pose in the process.

just to clarify... you can not load music (mp3, aac etc.) files via the os and have them show up in the ipod's playlists. You can manage files by directory using only the OS's GUI, as long as you dont want them to be available in the ipod's playlists.

If you are reasonably adept at the CLI, you can shoe-horn files into and out of the active playlists directory on your ipod. This would be a laborious task, and there is no reason to do so, when the iTunes interface is so slick.

What ISN'T done, is the ability to manage files by directory: to drag and drop them using your os and "just have it work."

Just to clarify, the iPod does allow you to manage files by directory, and allow you to drag and drop them using the OS, however it does not allow you to do this with MP3 or AAC files that you wish to listen to with the iPod. iTunes manages music files on the iPod, but Finder (or Windows explorer) manages the rest of the files on your iPod (for when it is in firewire disk mode).

I'm not sure about how it works on Windows, but on a Mac you can have it in firewire disk mode and have iTunes open at the same time, which provides you access to both modes quite easily.

"Apple's software is one way only...copy to the ipod or delete it. You can't copy from it. "

Apple's software, yes. But XPlay lets you drag and drop music either to or from the iPod; I find its a more elegant solution than iTunes, because it lets you use the pieces you like for downloading, ripping, managing ID3 tags. Then when you connect an iPod, it shows a special music folder that you drag and drop your music.

"Legitimate charge? Maybe not. But this way, Apple doesn't have to waste its time and money defending itself against the RIAA, whose members are also their business partners in the ITMS venture. It doesn't hurt its users, since we have other options."

A challenge by the RIAA against the iPod would've never made it to court. The RIAA sued Diamond over the very first portable MP3 player, the Rio. The RIAA lost. That was the case that set the prescident.

The iPod precaches all the music you're listening to to 32mb of RAM so it plays for about 30 minutes before spinning the hard drive up again. It works fine for all the joggers I know and I've never had a problem with it in my car, with rattles constantly and can't support a CD player without more than 10 seconds of buffer.

The Ipod hard disc has lasted quite well for my running. I've pulled at least 200 miles with it since May. I got freezes at one point but the last update cleared them up.

The hard drive in there spins real slow (spindle speed being the major component of shock damage) and it only spins when it's seeking for music. Start a playlist and it'll load 32 meg of your list into memory IMMEDIATELY...and only spin up to add more, which it can usually do in under 10 seconds. This equates to 20-30 seconds of hard disk spin during a 45 minute run.

Combine that with the one year warranty and an iSkin (with which I've dropped mine a number of times onto concrete from 4 feet, no problems) and you've got the best solution joggers ever had.

Mine (gen 3 30 gb) USED to do what your describing, occasionally, if I was running on the road with the 'pod in my hand. It never did it on trails or on a cushioned indoor track. The last update (2.1) fixed the problem. Something to think about.

And it is certainly not too heavy to run with. My friend's wife (who is around 115 lbs) runs with his, but wouldn't do so until he bought her an iSkin. The iSkin, besides protecting the shell from impact, is silicon

No, 2gb of flash memory is VERY expenisive, that would make the MP3 player cost at least $500
The new miniPods will most likely use the new 1" toshiba platters and have 32mb RAM like the current iPods do to load MP3s to prevent skipping.

I seriously doubt the 1" Toshiba drives are sub-$100. They're smaller than the 1.8" drives Apple currently uses for iPods, and are likely to be more expensive as a result.

I have to be honest, I'll believe this when I see it. I hope I'm proven wrong, but I think either the price is wrong ($200 maybe?), the capacity is wrong (256Mb perhaps?), or they're planning something evil, like tying the machine to a more expensive version of the iTMS.

Or maybe it's "$99 for the ePod, $299 for the special connecting cable";-)

2 GB of flash is currently much too expensive. however, in volume, dram should be sufficiently cheap. yes, it's volatile. but if they have enough battery power to spin up and power a hard-drive, keeping dram alive for a few days at a time should not be a big deal. if you plug it into a usb port every few days, it should never lose power. and if it dies, well, you just have to reload all your music.

PS2's specs killed the dreamcast because consoles are released on a much larger time table. New MP3 players come out all the time. They're far closer to commodity hardware than gaming consoles are, thus, someone's not going to wait more than a few months for this ipod to materialize before they go out and buy from a different manufacturer.

I wouldn't worry. Think Secret has been wrong so often, a rumour from them actually makes it LESS likely that something is true.

Seriously, Slashdot, why are you still posting rumours from the people who cried "G5s in the new Powerbooks," "New PDAs from Apple," and other insane, no-chance-is-it-true rumors? Their "reliable sources" aren't.

Why sell a prodeut for $100 when people are buying in droves at $299 - $499?

So the idea of releasing them for xmas is a horrible one indeed.

I think that the timing of the cheaper miniPods coincides nicely with the $100 mill Pepsi give-a-way starting in February.

It's all a game, the game called 'Maximize Profits'. And selling only the current iPods for xmas make you a big fat winner winner chicken dinner. Also, how many people are going to return their $150 128 meg POS flash MP3 player to Best Buy to get one of these new miniPods? I'd say more than a few.

The current models fit my jacket pocket just fine, thank you kindly. And it holds lots more music.

My only thought is that by getting into the ~$100 range, that makes it something parents will buy for spoiled teens more readily. That would make it pocketbook sized. Assuming there is any truth to the rumor, of course.

When you can get a cheap PII 100, install bsd on it, spend a week setting up a web interface and uploading all your songs, buying a cheap sound card, getting a car battery, put it all in a backpack and viola: Open Source MP3 player!

Tsk, tsk. Setting up the web interface for any self respecting geek takes just a few minutes. The rest of the week is getting the PHP, PNG, SVG and--in some cases--Flash to look just right and self-adjusting to every mp3 you have.

Steve Jobs is well known for keeping a clean image on his products - it seems strange to me that he would allow rainbow iPods. Rumour has it he objected to the coloured backgrounds in the iPod adverts.

It seems strange that he would dilute the iPod brand at such a critical point in its existence.

This would be really great. I'd love to be able to give something like this to my teenage nieces. Sure they could use a full-size iPod, but $400 is a lot for a teen to carry around and probably lose or break. $100 would be cheap enough that pain of loss wouldn't be too awful.

Then I could just give them iTMS gift certificates for all future gifts. I'd be the best uncle ever!

My first thought was the CompactFlash-sized "microdrive" hard drives developed by IBM (not sure if they belong to Hitachi now). A 1GB microdrive sells for about $200, though. Even with the volume discount Apple would surely get, it's hard to image they could hit that $99 price point at any capacity. And I guess flash memory is ruled out for price reasons too....

Up until now, the only demand for Microdrives has been camera owners who want a single Compact Flash card to take thousands of high resolution pictures. Microdrives use very few parts compared to a regular hard drive, so if they were produced in massive quantities, they could slash the price to a small fraction of the current one. Building the assembly line is likely the greatest expense in producing the drives.

If Apple came to IBM with an offer to buy a million of the 1 gig drives at $40 each, ($40,000,000 contract), I'm sure some VP would work their ass off to make it happen. Especially since it would help them reduce their price on CF Mirco Drives, and push regular flash memory out of the market. There's a massive market for 1-2 gig Micro Drives that is waiting for the price to get reasonable. Portable USB storage, video and photo cameras, MP3 players, PDAs, digital picture frames, just to name a few. It's actually pretty amazing that a solid state storage device has greater market share than a disc based one right now.

You can get a 2.2G one by some company called magicstore new off ebay for $180. Since its a standalone product and more of a niche one than an ipod the profit margin is probably considerable. Still it seems too good to be true that I could get an ipod with 2G for $99 anytime real soon. Also- if they used cf sized microdrives I'd hope they'd just use a cf slot so you could expand. Such players exist, but nothing with the looks, interface or sound quality of an ipod.Personally I use an ipaq 2215 (sdio/cf/

All I want is the iTunes music store in the UK. My new 40G iPod is reading, meerly 2gig full. My credit card is ready, my bank account is ready. I've got enough of a buy list to spend 100 in 30 seconds.

Sounds like an ideal companion to a mini-dv camcorder. If one could dump video to it in the field, and possibly do edits to it (portable iMovie?) - that'd be great. I don't really have much use for an ipod - too big for pocket transportability (really). Too small (storage-wise) to be useful as a semi-portable "desktop music server" - (though a G4 iBook serves that purpose pretty well).

To fit the space available, Apple went with a custom-sized Lithium Polymer battery (picture [ipodbattery.com]). These are of a size and shape that you're not going to be able to easily put together with Lithium Ion cells like a standard cellphone battery, so it's going to cost more.

That said, since a 600mAh Lithium polymer cell phone battery [altwireless.com] costs $34.95, the 850mAh or 1200mAh iPod batteries [ipodbattery.com] aren't a bad deal at $49.00, and Apple will even do the labor and return shipping for $50 more.

I just got an iPod for Solstice (actually, I got it a few weeks early), and the single best feature about it is the games.

That's right. The 4 crappy games that came on it are a blessing.

I HATE shopping. I've hated shopping since I was young and my mother dragged me out to malls to shop around. Back then, they didn't even have chairs everywhere. I stood around and hated the experience. Now, when I go shopping there are chairs everywhere, but nothing to do. It turns out, I still hate the experience.

But now that I have an iPod, I can listen to the music, toodle around with Parachute or Name that Song, and look up every once in a while to say, "Yes dear, that looks great." I don't know if any of the other MP3 players out there have these little time wasters on them, but they should.

(Oh, I hear the iPod does other things, too, like keep your contacts, alarms, notes and files. So handy!)

2GB? $100? Made by Apple? I will buy one of these the very second they become available. At that price I won't worry about the battery dying after a couple years, I won't have iPod envy when the new version comes out, I won't cry if I drop it on the floor and break it. A wonderful idea, Apple - I only wonder if they will be able to make enough of them.

A: Yes and no. The iPod's case is not designed to be opened, so, in that repsect, it's not what you would generally refer to as "user-replaceable". But, the case can be opened, and there are several third parties that offer replacement batteries for the iPod, such as iPodBattery.com [ipodbattery.com] (instructions available at that link) and PDASmart, for as low as $49. Some will even do the replacement for you if you send it it.

Q: What's the deal? Does Apple think the iPod is disposable?

A: No.

Q: I heard that the iPod's battery only lasts 18 months, and then you have to buy a new iPod, is that true?

A: NO! The vast, vast majority of even the earliest iPods, now over two years old, continue to function just fine. Some iPods, however, have had issues with batteries. Lithium ion batteries are only good for 300 to 500 charge/discharge cycles [batteryuniversity.com]. For this reason, certain customers' usage patterns may cause the batteries to degrade, or fail, sooner than others.

A2: If the battery does fail, and the iPod is no longer under its original one year warranty or $59 AppleCare Protection Plan [apple.com], or any of numerous third party service plans, you don't have to buy a new iPod. You may replace the battery yourself for as little as $49, or have Apple perform the replacement for $99.

Q: Why didn't Apple use better batteries?

A: Apple used the best lithium ion battery technology available from leading battery manufacturers. This is the best, most cost effective battery technology available given the requirements of the device. The lithium ion batteries Apple uses are no different than lithium ion batteries used by anyone else. The battery should last most normal users several years.

Q: Why doesn't Apple make the battery easily replaceable, then? Or use different batteries, like AA?

A: Because if they did either, the size of the batteries and/or the access panels and mechanisms required to access the battery would make the unit significantly larger than it is, likely by several milimeters in thickness at a minimum, and it may possibly affect other dimensions as well. It was an engineering decision to use an integrated battery; if it were not integrated, the unit would not have the small, sleek form factor that makes it so attractive. Additionally, the iPod's battery is indeed replaceable, as has been discussed above.

Q: Well, no one else does that!

A: Wrong. Prime example: Dell's new DJ portable music player uses an integrated, non-user-replaceable lithium ion battery, just like the iPod. Dell also has no plan or program to replace batteries outside of warranty at this time.

Q: But, Apple only released their battery replacement service because of all the bad publicity from the Neistat brothers' video [ipodsdirtysecret.com].

Wrong again. Apple released the battery replacement program as early as November 14. ipodsdirtysecret.com was only registered on November 20, and started being heavily publicized on November 21. Additionally, Apple had been planning the battery replacement program for months - these types of service programs don't just happen overnight - before Casey Neistat even had his first contact with Apple. The video campaign had nothing to do with Apple's rollout of the battery replacement program.

Lets say, the iPod had the choice of using 2AA batteries. Lets's say you got your AA's at $0.50(too high? too low? i dont have to buy them). Lets's see what youve paid for JUST BATTERIES over the "300-500" charge average lifetime of apples built in battery:

err, $300-$500... I made my math too easy =(

Probably more depending on how much you use the ipod, if the ipod could run on only 2AAs, and what quality battery you buy for it. Still complaining? If you are really desperate, i think some companies offer *gasp* external battery packs. But even at 99 bucks, Apples battery replacement nost likely means your not gonna blow double that much on batteries over the next few years.

The life of the battery is NOT 18 months in all cases. The majority of iPods (many are >2 years old) are still working flawlessly. The manufacturer of the iPod battery claims that the battery should still function after three years of use (or about 500 cycles). YMMV based on the frequency and type of use but so far most 1G iPods are still working so there isn't a reason to suspect this claim is false.

On occasion you will get a 'dud' something common to all consumer electronics. While it's unfortunate that Apple didn't have a battery replacement/warranty program when those two gentlemen made their movie, that is no longer an issue now. Applecare and battery programs were announces before the ipod's dirty secret domain was even registered.

Furthermore, if you don't want to pay apple to supply and replace your battery, you can do it yourself - see ipodbattery.com

Mod down if you must:I know it gets annoying seeing the same old "ipods aren't disposable" posts every day but I'd be upset if someone didn't buy me an iPod for christmas because they saw the parrent post and asusmed it was accurate.

Actually, i'm much sicker of seeing all these uninformed ipods are disposable posts.

A little more info on ipod batteries.The batteries cost about $50. That's a damn good deal for a Li-Poly battery. Apple just charges you $50 more for them to replace it for you. If it's not wrth it to you, buy a battery, pop the case off, and replace it. pretty easy. Yes your cell phone battery is cheaper, but that's becasue it's a low-capacity NiMH battery. A similar battery would almosy double the size of the ipod and last about for 30 mins of music.

Apple can' use a standard battery. Cylinder cells hold little charge and are huge. Apple's custom batteries can be molded to make use of every spare area inside the ipod. I remember people comlaining about how the smaller G2 ipods had a shorter battery life. It if was a standard (which doesnn't exist) battery, it would be a lot worse. And a battery hat neesds to be replaced every 300 charges (whiich is about 3 years for most people; the ones whose batteries are dying must charge it too often) doesn't need a little door. THe case isn't that hard to remove.

Disclaimer, etc:I'm a mac fan. Also i just got my new G5 Sunday and am still getting used to the new keyboard, so sorr about the bad typing.

If I was on Apple's shoes, and knew I'd not be able to manufacture enough units on time for christmas, I'd release it in the summer, and make sure the product is not announced until AFTER christmas, to avoid competing against the normal Ipod.

Nintendo has used a similar tactic in the past when releasing new Gameboy "flavors", It makes the best business sense IMHO. It's just that we've heard about the new product a week too soon.

Reason being that any wise business will want to get rid of their stock before releasing their product. It will do them no good to liquidate the older iPods at a loss. People will still buy the new iPod if they release it (allbeit unlikely), even if it's after Christmas.

I don't see why. I mean yea some people use Ogg, but why bother supporting a format that almost nobody uses? Sure I know you probably use it and converted your whole collection to it. Don't you think you should have just stuck with the format that 99% of people use and actually has industry wide support from portable music hardware vendors?

I'm honestly not trying to make fun of you or say something bad about ogg(it's AS good as mp3), but I see no reason to support it just like I don't see any reason to support, FLAC,Monkey's Audio, Real Audio, etc in this particular application. I would be nice to have support for all audio formats in every audio player, but I don't think that is too realistic a thing to ask for right now. It's just not what the majority of Apple's customers are using or asking for.

I guess as a Linux and OpenSource user I'm supposed to stand up for what's open, but that doesn't change the fact that MP3 is the defacto portable digital audio standard. Maybe over time the Music Store vendors will be able to snuff it out in favor of a "secure" audio format, but until then I'm perfectly content with plain old functional MP3 for portable music players. Just IMHO, YMMV, blah, blah.

Well... there's like a display, and a case, and some buttons, and some sockets, and a charger, and some headphones,and some chips, and a circuit board, and a battery, and a CD, and box, and some profit. Stuff like that.

They could ship the same device, 'cept for a smaller drive, and people will bitch.or they'll reduce the form factor or use lesser components and people will bitch.They could have the exact same product they sell today, reduce the price by $150,give $150 iTunes credit, and people would -still

It does present a standard USB (or firewire) FS interface (FAT32 for the Windows ones, HFS+ for the Mac iPods). I don't know if you can load songs onto it that way directly; you probably will still need a program to update the song DB files, but there are several OSS projects to do so (mostly directed towards Linux, obviously). I'd just use the iTunes software, but if you don't like it for whatever reason, try one of the free (as in GPL, iTunes already being free as in beer) iPod loaders. It takes standard

why don't they just reintroduce the 5gig model for sub $200? I mean, everyone would like an ipod, but they are friggin expensive to most people.

The only reason i am not getting one for christmas is becasue of price. If my significant other could have saved 100 bucks and gotten a 5gig instead of 10gig, i could be rockin out christmas night to my cool new mp3 player.

I thought I read in a post that if you copy music to the iPod as a regualer hard drive, then the iPod won't play it. If that is the case, then it is pretty worthless IMO.

Okay, here's how it works. The iPod is one drive that works in two different ways. One way is an automatic sync up with iTunes (which you can also do yourself). The other is to use it as a detachable hard drive. The files iTunes puts on your iPod aren't visible when you view it as a hard drive. This makes sense, actually, as it keeps the two uses of it logically separate.

Now, to copy music back to a computer and be able to play it on your iPod, there are two ways to do it.

First, is the simple way. Copy the file to your iPod when it's acting as a hard drive. Copy it to the computer in question. Drop it into iTunes (or whatever) and let it copy back to the iPod.

Second, you can open up the iPod when it's acting as a hard drive, go into the invisible iPod_Control folder, then the Music folder. Next you'll have various folders to choose from. I have F00 - F19. You file will be in one of these folders. Why it spreads your music across 20 folders, I don't know. Maybe it's to try to prevent copying back (but that's a pretty weak scheme for doing so). Maybe it's because the iPod can find a song more easily using some sort of hash (but why not simply access by filename?). Doing it this way, however, you'll notice that all non-alphanumeric and non-period characters have been turned to underscores. I can only assume that's so they can use the same code on the Windows side, which doesn't allow nearly as many characters in filenames as the Mac does.

(It's interesting to note that each of the folders, F00 - F19, has files running A-Z. It doesn't split up based on first letter, at the very least.)

Most of my songs are over the 5 minute mark. Then I completely blow that away with a 20 minute version of Moby Dick from the Led Zeppelin DVD. Or, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Or a two-hour trance mix from Oakenfold. I've found I just have to limit my playlists on my iPod by MB rather than time.